


Making Service Matter

by heartofthesunrise



Category: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mall AU, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 01:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13020153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofthesunrise/pseuds/heartofthesunrise
Summary: Pete and Mikey work Black Friday at their local GameStop.





	Making Service Matter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rage_for_love](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rage_for_love/gifts).



Pete turns up on Mikey’s doorstep at four in the morning armed with the largest thermos of coffee Mikey’s ever seen. He looks sleep-softened, rumpled. 

_ That was stupid,  _ Mikey thinks. He hasn’t gone to bed at all, figures he’ll pass out for a full day after they get this over with. He knows he’ll regret it later. Oh well. 

They pick up a flat dozen doughnuts at the 24-hour Dunkin on the highway and drive in companionable quiet. There’s people out on the road today, already, lines of cars ready to deposit people in front of shops to stand in more lines. Mikey isn’t much of a holiday romantic. He uncaps the thermos and swigs milky coffee directly from the mouth of it. 

“Hey,” Pete says, taking a hand off the wheel. “There’s mugs down there, dude.” 

“Thanks.” 

The mall parking lot is half-full and Pete has to circle to find a spot near their store. He checks his watch and swears under his breath. 

“We’ve got time, Pete,” Mikey says. “It’s not, like. I mean, it’s just one day.” 

But Pete always manages to sort of take the job seriously, which is why is the assistant manager and Mikey only just got keys three weeks ago, and even then, just because they had somebody quit on them and Mikey was the only one who’d been around long enough to take the emergency promotion. 

He doesn’t even like to say it out loud to himself. He’s halfway to accidentally being the second ASM at a mall GameStop in North Jersey, and he still lives with his mom, and he doesn’t even know what he’d be doing if he weren’t doing this but he still knows it’s beneath him, somehow. 

Also, it’s Black Friday. Hence, the four in the morning wake-up call with coffee. 

There’s already a little line forming, a dozen people milling around on the sidewalk. Pete carries the coffee and the mugs and the donuts while Mikey fumbles his keys, tries to get them inside and through the sliding gate as quickly as possible. He locks the door behind them. The ambient noises of the emergency lighting fixtures humming, the chirp of the security system before Pete punches in his passcode. The beep of the safe, which Mikey’s meant to pay attention to, so he knows when he can open it with the new day’s combination. 

They’d all come in the morning of Thanksgiving to put up the corporate signage, Mikey and Gabe across the store from each other on separate step stools, hanging tacky, plastic ornaments from the ceiling and smoothing snowman-shaped window clings onto the front glass. Pete had sat in the back repricing,  _ too short to be of any help,  _ Gabe kept teasing him. So the store’s done up, all the new consoles in neat stacks on pallets in the back room, ad catalogues in every place convenient. 

The safe  _ bloops _ gently in that way that means Mikey’s allowed to open it, now, and he does. He and Pete set up the cash register drawers. The coffee is still hot, once they’ve each had a mug of it and are sitting on the floor behind the cash-wrap, drinking more, eating doughnuts and hiding from the oncoming storm. Outside the sky is beginning to turn that funny pale tea-color that precedes the rolling dawn. It’s five-thirty. They have half an hour to mentally prepare. 

“I might quit after Christmas,” Mikey says absently. He licks a smear of icing off the side of his hand. 

Pete’s looking up at him. “Yeah? What’s the new job?” 

Mikey shrugs. He’s not avoiding Pete’s gaze, exactly, so much as he just doesn’t know how to say the next part. “I don’t know yet. Just figure, y’know. It’s time.” 

He can see the shift of Pete turning away in his peripheral vision. He can hear the faint noise of Pete draining the rest of his coffee. 

“Don’t you ever think about what you’re gonna do after this?” Mikey asks quietly. “Or when?” 

Outside the line of people are getting chatty. The sound of them talking is muted through the doors, indistinct and fuzzy, like the sound of the ocean in a shell. He knows Pete’s looking at him again. Pete’s always looking at him - it’s one of the things that makes him itch to get out of here, to go be anonymous in a bookstore or a restaurant or something. 

Mikey doesn’t have a job to make friends, he has a job because his mom told him to. 

“I kinda don’t,” Pete says at last. “Think about it, I mean. Like… I get that it’s not cool to like your shitty retail job but. I dunno. I do, I guess.” 

“Really?” Mikey hates it here. How lazy it feels, how he can spend half a shift sitting on the counter behind the cash-wrap just texting. He likes the discounts, and he likes that Gerard will come visit him sometimes and ask him about upcoming games, make him feel useful for a minute. He likes paying for his mom’s groceries. He likes not being in school, and having a job is the easiest way to justify that. He doesn’t know very much about Pete’s life outside of work, though. Maybe this is the best thing he’s got going. 

“I mean, I’m good at it,” Pete says. 

Mikey gets that. It’s nice to do something and feel like you’re doing it right. Mikey would probably hate the job less if he weren’t garbage at it. 

“And also, like… I’m gonna work a shitty retail job someplace, no matter what, right?” He shakes the thermos before emptying the rest of the coffee into his mug. “I like everybody who works here. I like most of the people who come in. It’s just… I just don’t think it’s all that bad, I guess.” 

Pete clears his throat and looks at Mikey. It takes him a minute to get with it, to realize Pete’s waiting for him to answer. Like they’re having an actual  _ heart-to-heart  _ or something, God. 

“I like you, too,” Mikey says stupidly. “I mean, all of you. I just… I don’t wanna be working at a GameStop when I’m thirty.” 

“You’re not thirty,” Pete points out. “You’re twenty-five.”   


“Close enough.” 

“Okay, so what do you want to be doing when you’re thirty?” 

Mikey gives a big, exaggerated shrug. All of his plans for the future come in vague, contextless daydreams: owning a house and having a yard for a dog in ten years; having his evenings free to go to shows; helping his mom pay off her mortgage. He thought maybe he could be a talent scout for a record label, or something - he’d be good at that, but he has no idea where to start, and he’s too old to try to find an internship. And he doesn’t have the time, anyway. 

He makes to tell Pete this - or, some of it, the stuff that can be quantified, anyway - but the alarm Pete set on his cell phone starts to bleat, which means they’ve got sixty seconds until they’ve got to unlock the doors. 

And then it’s just the rush, the press of the crowd. Pete’s working the sales floor, getting people ready to check out, and running to the back repeatedly only to emerge with towering stacks of consoles when the pile they had behind the cash-wrap dwindles down to nothing. Mikey sinks down into his brain stem, ringing out each customer like an automaton, counting out change and handing back receipts. 

Gabe comes in a couple hours after opening and takes Pete’s place on the floor so Pete can open up the other register, and they each manage a paltry fifteen minute lunch break somewhere in there. The cold interior of Pete’s car and the burned coffee and the conversation on the floor seem like a lifetime ago, or like they happened to another person. A conscious and whole person. 

By the time they get out it’s only one in the afternoon, the sun still casting its watery light over the mall parking lot. Mikey has to blink hard, four or five times, to get his eyes to adjust. 

The store is still a mess, but he’s clocked out, and so is Pete, beside him. 

“Do you need a ride home?” Pete asks. 

Mikey shrugs. “Yeah,” he says. “If you’re offering.” 

“I’m offering.” 

In the car he can feel himself unspooling. Becoming human again. They listen to the radio. Mikey thinks about putting in job applications. He thinks about having a job that wants him to come in early on a holiday weekend, where Pete won’t be there to pick him up with coffee, where he’ll have to make friends with some new coworker if he wants to knock his shoulder into somebody else’s in commiseration on a hard day. 

He contemplates Pete in the pearly light coming through the clouds. The skin around his eyes is a mottled purple, like he doesn’t sleep enough. His hands rest on the steering wheel in a loose, casual hold. He has one sleeve rolled up higher than the other. He is a kind person. 

The car speeds along the highway. 

Pete pulls into the drive at Mikey’s house and shuts off the ignition. 

“Sorry, earlier, if I like… If you felt like I was judging you, or trying to change your mind, or something,” Pete says. He puts a hand on the back of his neck and peers out the windshield at nothing. “I’m just like… I dunno. Weird day, right?” 

Mikey laughs, and he knows his weird teeth are showing, and he tries to stifle it. “Yeah,” he says. “Something like that.” 

He isn’t unbuckling his seatbelt, and Pete’s not making to start the car back up. They’re just sitting in Mikey’s driveway, looking at the greying, slushy pile of three-day-old snow built up on the edge of the lawn. 

“You were right, though,” Mikey says, finally, and he waits until he can feel Pete’s eyes on him to continue. “I should have something else lined up if I want to leave.” He pauses again. “And it’s not so bad. Like, the people are good. You were right about that.” 

He undoes his seatbelt and puts his hand on the door latch, ready to escape. 

“I like  _ you, _ anyway,” he says, and then he’s out the door and into his house, while Pete’s still sitting in his car out front. He feels his pulse - it’s pounding. 

He goes to his room to check his schedule, to see when he’s next working with Pete again. 


End file.
